Without a bad shot: how and what for the security officers poisoned academician Bekhterev

In connection with the poisoning of Alexey Navalny, social networks recall the circumstances of the death of the famous Russian and Soviet psychiatrist, neuropathologist, physiologist and psychologist, academician Vladimir Bekhterev, who suddenly died on December 24, 1927 in Moscow.

It is interesting that not long before this, in the summer of the same year, one of the main Soviet newspapers Izvestia published his article "On the Creation of the Pantheon in the USSR", which, according to the author's opinion, should be "accessible to all comers. It would be a collection of conserved brains belonging to talented individuals in general, no matter what areas of activity they belong to, and at the same time, the propaganda of a materialistic view of the development of human creative activity".

Ironically, Bekhterev's brain was the first to enter this Pantheon, and his body was cremated and his ashes were buried at the Literary Mostki Volkovsky cemetery in Leningrad (St. Petersburg).

However, in the medical environment of the country, a rumor immediately spread that Bekhterev's death was due to the fact that after meeting with Stalin, whom Bekhterev had provided medical advice, he imprudently told that Stalin, in his opinion, was paranoid. And in fact, Bekhterev was poisoned the next day after, at the request of the Medical and Sanitary Directorate of the Kremlin, during a medical examination of Stalin for dry hands (Stalin carefully concealed his partial dry hands, tried not to undress in public and rarely even showed himself to doctors, since at that time dry-handedness was considered a hereditary disease of prodigal people), along the way diagnosed him with a psychiatric diagnosis of "severe paranoia", wrote the historian Roy Medvedev. True, the scientist's granddaughter, Professor Natalya Bekhtereva, in an interview in 1995, denied that her grandfather had made such a diagnosis to Stalin.

According to the official version of the Soviet government, Bekhterev died as a result of acute food poisoning - canned food or sandwiches. The facts indicate that Bekhterev, who came from Leningrad to the I All-Union Congress of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists, went with his wife to the Bolshoi Theater on the Swan Lake on the evening of December 23. During the intermission, he ate two portions of ice cream in the buffet, and from the second act he returned to the apartment of Professor Sergei Blagovolin, where he stayed...

...And suddenly he fell ill: he had profuse diarrhea. After a short-term attack of an acute gastrointestinal disease (the causes of which remained unknown), despite the injections given by some hastily invited family doctor, the academician began to lose consciousness, his breathing became intermittent, the pulse rate dropped sharply and after a short agony he died...

The first doubts about the "naturalness" of death were expressed precisely among colleagues of Bekhterev himself - highly professional doctors of the pre-revolutionary school: they were alarmed by the fleeting and strange death of a man who, according to the testimonies of people close to him, had excellent health, especially since there were no symptoms that foreshadowed his deterioration he hadn't experienced it in recent months.

Further, the strangeness only added. So, the autopsy of Bekhterev's body was ordered by the People's Commissar of Health Nikolay Semashko not to specialists pathologists, but to psychiatrists... Having examined the brain, they decided that there were no pathologies in the substance of the brain, in the membranes and in the vessels - everything was downright perfect...

After that, the brain was filled with formalin and taken away, and no one ever examined it again. As well as the body of Bekhterev, which was cremated with suspicious speed and despite the categorical protests of the academician's children. It is also curious that shortly before his death, Bekhterev married the niece of the People's Commissar of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) of the USSR Enoch Yagoda, Berta Gurzhi, with a second marriage. She was 30 years younger than him...